authority

     There is a simple problem with all human authority.  The problem is universal and sooner or later, always devastating.  This problem arises with every single government instituted among men, whether it be national, provincial, or municipal.  It arises with every single corporation or other business enterprise.  It arises with every single religion ever constituted and organized.  Certainly it is endemic to boy scout troops and football teams.

      Baron Acton's famous quote, "Power tends to corrupt, and absolute power corrupts absolutely. Great men are almost always bad men." has actually been said over and over again.  Not that anyone ever learns.

     The problem, as I see it, is that once control is tasted, individuals tend to begin to believe in themselves as actually being superior or better in some way or other than the people they are controlling and impacting.  This belief seeps into their thinking, slowly and insidiously, gradually taking over in every process of their living, until even their own excrement smells to them like perfume.  The finest expression of the problem is the observation that people of authority regress to earlier and earlier stages of childhood to where they forget or never learn how to admit to mistakes or errors, how to apologize, how to regret, and thus, how to fix or improve anything.  Thus empowered, every organization, no matter how powerful and righteous its origins, reaches some kind of zenith and then, first faltering ever-so-slightly in the breeze, stalls, luffs, and turns slowly downward until, too late, it finds itself hurtling towards the earth, tracing over and over again Icarus' fateful journey and bringing all mankind, again, to the depths of depravity and destruction.

     Enjoy the ride, folks, because the end of this one, globalization and worldwide central planning and trade, is a doozy.